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Karel Ancona - Best Cali Hemp

A short history on hemp.

Hemp’s rich history extends back 8,000 years to what is modern day Taiwan and China and to 1606 in present day United States. Several of our Founding Fathers - Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and Henry Clay - all farmed hemp for its oil, fiber and seed. In fact,


The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper, and there was a period of time that hemp was a mandated crop. Thanks to passage of The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, all medical and practical benefits of either marijuana and hemp were put aside.


As noted in our second Best Cali Hemp blog, hemp was briefly resurrected as a source for making rope, desperately needed during World War II. The 1960s brought further sweeping restrictions, followed by Pres. Ronald Reagan’s War on Drugs in the 1980s, again without regard for the fact that hemp, unlike marijuana, had no psychoactive properties and was growing wild in ditch-banks throughout the U.S. Today, the industrial hemp industry is again taking root as we grapple with how to provide necessary daily items in an environmentally sound way, and too, as we begin to understand its associated health benefits.

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